The Social Characteristics of Prisoners

One of the things students are usually told when studying theories of crime is that our ability to draw conclusions about “crime, criminals and criminality” on the basis of those convicted of crimes is, at best, limited and at worst (think “phrenology”!) totally misguided...

However, while it’s clearly important for students to understand the limitations surrounding both quantitative and qualitative analyses of serving prisoners, this doesn’t mean that data about the social characteristics of prisoners should be ignored - especially when, as here, such characteristics are compared to those of the general, non-prison, population - to perhaps surprising effect.

The analysis can be both enlightening and serve as a useful starting-point for any analysis of power and control as these concepts apply to the judicial system and processes.